Ghostthings of Darkness
by madelvia
Summary: There is a ghost in the Hogwarts library. Students, the studious kind, who solemnly cradle the dusty tomes and thirstily drink in the knowledge within, speak of it.


_Although JKR has stated that after his death Voldemort's soul was left in a limbo of sorts and was therefore unable to become a ghost, I always thought that it otherwise would have made sense for him to be one. He feared death to such an extreme that I think that he would have been one of the foolish souls who would "choose to remain behind," as Nearly Headless Nick put it._

* * *

 **Ghostthings of Darkness**

It is said that ghosts are souls in their purest form. They wander wherever they truly belong, wherever they, in a past life, were most drawn. Yet for all their purity, the reasons that some souls remain on earth are violent, for the moment life is ripped from the ruined body, the soul, too, bleeds.

It is said this second ethereal life is a damned life, one that is fraught with pain, yet comfort, with misery, yet joy. Ghosts are doomed to watch the world pass on while remaining static, for a devastating forever and always. As time goes on, the easy, loping rhythm of mortal life smears the years into decades.

* * *

There is a ghost in the Hogwarts library. Students, the studious kind, who solemnly cradle the dusty tomes and thirstily drink in the knowledge within, speak of it. Its presence slithers out from between the dusty stacks; a book, previously elusive to the seeker, lies on a table corner waiting for discovery; a persistent nudge towards the Restricted Section plagues the peripheries of curious, cunning minds.

"Why are you here?" one student asks one day, speaking to the ghost he never saw. The student, once a young child enchanted by the world of magic, was old now, ready to graduate and far from the young impressionable child he once was. That afternoon, he is to leave his home of seven years. All he feels is the distinctive emptiness of the heart before loss and the lingering chill of the ghost's body hanging thin in the library's air.

The student holds his breath, his hands and arms grounding his body by clutching the edge of a table. Many nights of his youth have been spent inside these chambers, at this table. Along the scratched edge, the student can still see what he had carved into the wood so many years before: _A. S. Potter_. The ghost's presence did not leave. A shiver ran down the student's spine.

"The youth. The future." For the first time in the student's seven years at school, a soft voice floats out from between the volumes.

To the student's surprise the voice is young, no older than he. The words lilted pleasantly, then fell, coiling, twisting. Cold tendrils lick the student's stomach. He had no reply.

The voice comes again, louder, closer. "Education failed me once, you know. It will not fail again. Not me, not you."

It emerges wholly from between the stacks in a single rush. The ghost's body is fluid silver; its threadbare eternal robes incongruously defying the elegant fingers, the aristocratic stance, the handsome features. A green badge glints on its chest. Blood drips from the hems of its clothes, but it leaves no mark on the rug.

The student had edged away from his old table and now stands at the entryway of the library. The ghost's words fall heavily onto the rug, and the air is silent once more. The desk of dear old Madame Pince is vacant; no one is in the library. Graduation is a day to rejoice in what had been learned in the past, not to rejoice in what is yet to be learned. The student hears his kid sister shout from down the corridor; Mum must have sent her, he thinks. The graduation ceremony must be beginning soon. Her expression is too far to discern, but her hair burns as bright as fire in the night. To her he turns his back.

"Sir." A wry smile twists the ghost's lips, and it blinks its translucent eyes at the student.

"Sir," the student begins again, his brow furrowed. There is something he has always… "I've been wondering, what do you know about… about Horcruxes?"

"Horcruxes?" The ghost's eyebrows shoots up theatrically, but the beginnings of a smile twitch around the corners of its mouth. Perhaps it is the dim light of the library, but the student believes that, for just a moment, the ghost's body flashes corporeal. Its eyes, moments ago grey, glint red; its skin glows; its chest expands with breath.

"What are… _Horcruxes_. That, my boy, is what they call a dangerous question."


End file.
